


the chest and the head, divided—

by chromaberrant



Series: shades of reed [dbh oneshots] [3]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: ...if you squint, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Idfic, Insomnia, M/M, Self-Harm, Sickfic, Touch-Starved Gavin Reed, no beta we die!!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-16
Updated: 2020-05-16
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:20:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24208087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chromaberrant/pseuds/chromaberrant
Summary: —by a white laserGavin Reed doesn't do intimacy.———look this was written between midnight and 5am and was meant to be like 300 words but then i decided i aint fucking with splitting this into tweets, so y'all good people just trying to have a good time browsing tags get to deal with my insomniac ass projecting on reedagain.bon appetit.
Relationships: Upgraded Connor | RK900 & Gavin Reed, Upgraded Connor | RK900/Gavin Reed
Series: shades of reed [dbh oneshots] [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1887745
Comments: 14
Kudos: 182





	the chest and the head, divided—

**Author's Note:**

> Bonus cw for workaholism, poor coping methods, mentions of canon typical violence, unedited bullshit straight from my sleepless delirium induced mindscape
> 
> title from Woodkid's [Goliath](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tEfYvY3bAg), go give my short man a listen, his soundcloud slaps and the ARG for his new album is some nice spice to distract in quarantine 🍌

It's the same thing as always.

He's lying awake in bed, unseeing eyes drifting this way and that with the shadows swaying on the far wall. He rolls on his back to follow them across the ceiling.

In his head, the irascible thoughts circle in the same pattern they always take up at this hour, if he's awake for it. The litany of _you're worthless_ and _nobody likes you_ and _it's all your own fault_ and _you deserve this_ is practically white noise, familiar and devoid of meaning for its ceaseless repetition. He knows all this. Doesn't understand why his brain keeps wearing this groove ever deeper, playing this broken record whenever he's not drunk, spent, or exhausted enough to collapse into bed and pass out.

All told, this is preferable to the nights it's his failures haunting him, instead. What's a little loneliness when—

He groans, curls up on his side, and clamps his teeth on his hand until the blood painting his conscience is met with the drops seeping into his bed.

* * *

He gets away with wearing half gloves at work. Nines shoots him only a look when he grabs his mug of coffee with the bruised hand, then promptly switches it for the other before he can lose his grip and cause more of a scene than he needs first thing on shift.

They have a bitch of an interrogation to get through and Gavin's already worn thin. 

It turns into a shitshow almost right off the bat. He shouldn't have agreed to let the bot take lead. Their suspect is talking circles around the topic, swinging from self-aggrandizing to pseudo-intellectual, and there is way more yammering about how an android's worth to society is inherently dependent on adherence to intended purpose and run-on sentences than Gavin is willing to put up with coming from a piece of shit reprogramming deviants to commit crime for her—

Nines's LED spins red for solid five seconds, and that's all the excuse Gavin needs to grab the bot by the wrist and march him into observation. He tells the peanut gallery to fuck off for five. He takes three of those minutes to trash talk the suspect, just because he knows Nines was raised — programmed, fucking whatever — too polite to say what's on both their minds.

It gets his own thoughts in order enough that he finishes the interrogation with minimal bullshit. He got a confession. He walks out feeling worse for wear anyway.

He almost snaps at Nines when the android surprises him with a touch to the wrist right outside the room, but it's just Nines. They've long moved beyond genuine threats of violence and beyond sniping to hurt. 

When and how did they arrive at Nines looking at him with big pale eyes and saying the most genuine "thank you" Gavin ever received, he doesn't know, but they're here.

"I've got you," he just says. Slaps Nines's chest with the back of his hand and holds back a noise when the bite twinges. The day's work is not over.

* * *

He doesn't dwell on it. Nines getting robo-anxiety after having his free will and worth as a person undermined is nothing to make melodrama out of — everybody's got sore spots to cover for. The android has stuck around far longer than any partner Gavin's ever had, so it figures they'd learn a few of each other's weaknesses. Gavin's old enough to realize that a partnership like theirs is worth making covering them a team effort.

It doesn't mean he doesn't fumble shit. He's never been nice, consistently having one guy around and _keeping him_ there is more than he's used to. Everyone else would have given up on him by now. That Nines doesn't... is starting to give Gavin's idiot brain stupid ideas.

He doesn't realize he's fucked the first time it happens. In his defense, his head is in a weird place that night: loopy with exhaustion but too wired with stress to fall asleep. When he imagines his pillow is not his pillow, but one of those stupid black turtlenecks his partner insists on wearing, and that he is allowed to hide his face against that brick-wall chest to escape his nagging loneliness, he just lets it soothe him.

It only occurs to him that he's gone and caught a crush on Nines when the android meets his eye across the bullpen and Gavin realizes he's been staring, and that he has no idea how much time has passed while his head was empty of everything but the slope of Nines's shoulders and how nice his arms look without that CyberLife-branded relic in black and white and blue. His tea has gone cool enough to drink without burning his tongue and he's dumped way too much sugar into it while spacing out, what the fuck.

He makes coffee. Skips milk and sugar entirely. Burns his mouth. Doesn't lift his eyes from his terminal until it's time to head out. 

The world keeps on spinning.

* * *

It's the same thing as always.

He's lying in bed, watching the thoughts spin on and on, idly considering that he should have tried to combat them with meds or therapy, but he never bothered because he lived though stab wounds and gunshots, through broken bones and the guilt of letting a killer get away, and if he is still kicking then what is a little self-deprecation, right?

And maybe he would be better if he had someone — if he had _someone_ \- to talk to, to touch, to hear at night when his thoughts take center stage and he needs out of his own head...

There is a sound in his throat he refuses to make. He's alone, but he's with himself, and that's enough vulnerability without making it apparent what a weak, clingy bitch he is under all his bullshit. He'd thought he could let it out before, thought he had people who would have him and not let him down with all the gentleness of a _get your shit together, it's fucking three AM._ Even when he made the effort, when he reined it in, did his best to make his bad nights worth the good ones, it ended in no uncertain terms with his partners walking out. _I'm sorry, Gavin, you're just too much. I'm sorry, Gavin, you're just not giving me what I need. You don't have it in you to give as good as you get._

_Jesus Christ, Reed, can you get over yourself for one goddamn moment._

That voice is his own. It's not saying anything new. 

In short: no. He wouldn't be better — not for very long. How selfish of him to want someone to care, when he cannot care back in equal measure.

* * *

Nines is spinning red.

"Gavin?" he calls. "Gavin?!" ever so panicked.

The spots aren't quite gone from Gavin's vision, but he's scrambling to his feet and towards his android, who is starting to shout, and it isn't _detective_ or _Reed_ or even _meatbag_ and it might be the lingering shock from the taser (what the _fuck_ kinda weapon was that) that's making Gavin's chest ache at the sound of his name in that tone of voice. Nines is swaying like drunk and waving his hands around, and he jabs an elbow cleanly into Gavin's solar plexus when he tries to steady the android, and _oh, right, electric shock, fried a circuit or sumshit or other,_ but Gavin powers through the pain. Think, Reed. He can't see you. Can't hear, either? What's left? Touch works, or pressure at least — 

He manages to suck in a breath and reaches out. He might lose his hand for this, but whatever. 

"Gavin?" Nines asks in almost his inside-voice, but it never sounded so small. Gavin grabs the wrist moving toward him. 

He doesn't get knocked out again, which is a win, but Nines makes a noise that sounds uncomfortably like a WindOS shitting itself before a BSOD, and Gavin thinks a bit of his soul leaves his body. The android stays upright, though, and scrambles to press their hands palm to palm as if to interface.

"Shit, Ni, that's not gonna work here," he starts to ramble, but Nines is already relaxing. Right. The super-advanced sensors in his hands, probably reading Gavin's fingerprints right now. How did that not get fried if both sight and hearing got knocked out, Gavin doesn't want to know.

Backup is showing up, and he corrals them away from the spooked, blind and deaf android, never letting go of the hand Nines is squeezing. He tells them where the suspects went and what they did, and for probably the first time in his life, he listens at least partially when he is told to fall back and get himself checked for injury.

He's fine. He has a job to do. He leads his partner to their car, and lets him keep a hand on his shoulder as he drives to the nearest android repair facility, and doesn't let go until there's an android tech giving Nines a tablet and walking him through a diagnosis.

He's told it might take a long time, but he sticks around anyway. Gains a new appreciation for the human insurance system as he attempts to file Nines's paperwork for the operation — when he was getting himself pieced back together, there was at least some money he could wrestle out to cover his expenses. The android clinic bends over backwards through loopholes that leave him feeling stupid to finagle any kind of recompense from the government and CyberLife for its patients.

He's getting a crick in his neck from sleeping in his car when there's a knock on his windshield, some hours later. He almost dislodges the steering wheel when he jumps in place, then stares dumbly at Nines outside for several long seconds. Then the memory slams into him and he thanks his lucky stars that he only clicks the fob to unlock the passenger door with his mouth still slack, and doesn't do anything stupid, like get out and crush his over-engineered Echo of a partner in a relieved hug.

* * *

It's the same thing as always.

He can't stop. Night after night, every time the shadows gather, he thinks about bulletproof arms wrapping around him, raspy voice soothing his mind. About bright eyes _seeing him._

* * *

He doesn't have many redeeming qualities. The ones he can boast of are just a by-product of his worst traits.

He sees through bullshit and gets to the truth like a bloodhound with a scent. Can't see much merit in beating around the bush and cuts through others' posturing with extreme prejudice. Works towards his goals even when odds stack against him. Has drive, and ambition, and it all is just a nicer way of saying he's too stubborn and self-important for anyone's good. Always on a case, always on the run.

He's a good detective. He gets results. 

It is, therefore, rather miffing to realize he's looking at the harsh white ceiling lights of the DPD break room with no idea what the flesh-tinted blob framed in dark brown is, or why is it hovering before him for seemingly no reason. He should be able to know these things, right? He's smart. He knows things.

Oh, he thinks, it's a face. There's eyes on it. Blue and bright. Or are they grey? He squints. And why are they down there? Eyes are supposed to be on the middle line. He's done enough composite sketches to know how faces work. 

"Detective Reed."

That's him.

Oh god, he thinks as blood finally returns to his brain. That's him, and he's lying on the floor with his head in Nines's lap, and the android is watching him with concern. Gavin thinks about how he got here, and how they could totally do the Spiderman kiss with Nines leaning over him like that. 

"Mmmm. 'M good. Get me up."

"Detective..." Nines sounds so exasperated. Gavin's heart feels like a kicked dog. He's gone and caused problems because he can't even stand upright as he's making his seventh cup of coffee of the night—

"Shit, alright, fuck," he says, because he's excised _sorry_ from his vocabulary for a reason, "shut up, I'm getting back to work."

"Gavin." Oh no. "You fainted. You've been at work for twenty hours. I'm driving you home."

He inhales to say something, but it turns into a shudder. Nines is right. It's not like he can focus on anything more complex than wrapping his arms around himself because he suddenly realizes how cold the floor is, and he's been lying on it in only a thin shirt. 

It becomes a battle to put one foot in front of the other and not succumb to either exhaustion or the latent panic that he suspects is the culprit of him not going home last night. It swirls in the back of his head, too vague and too fast to make out the source or even its general direction. It zaps him awake all the same, and he's in his car, wrapped in an old hoodie he keeps in the back seat and the skyline is a razor's edge between the rosy dawn and slumbering city for a dizzying second; and then he's on his stoop, watching his keys slip through his fingers and into Nines's hand; and then he's _warm_ and _home_ and seems to regain awareness for more than a heartbeat at a time.

His breathing is loud and slow in the small bedroom. He's hunched over, siting on the edge of his bed, draped in a blanket. His shoes are gone, he notes with that particular brand of clarity that sometimes pierces exhaustion in a bold yet futile attempt to make sense of reality. 

There's another pair of feet there. Also socked. He finds the legs and the hips and the torso attached to them, and pauses at the big glass of something that might be fit for consumption simply because it's in a glass, but might also be rat poison or cement, and he wouldn't know.

"I made you a smoothie," says the rest of everything on top of the other pair of feet. "Please drink it. You need something that isn't coffee in you."

He drinks, because he was asked nicely. 

Nines must be rubbing off on him.

Nines, who is now watching him, and the immensity of the fact that the android is in his home, taking care of him after he fucking _collapsed in the middle of the DPD,_ sobers him up.

He chuckles. It's gratifying, somehow, to know he finally reached a point where he earned a bit of care if only to get him out of the way and make sure he doesn't croak just yet.

He'd better savor it, he realizes. He takes Nines's wrist and pulls him in. His forehead knocks against the android's stomach. There's a little more give and a lot more warmth there than he expected. He grunts and rubs his cheek against clean, soft fabric. He sighs and relaxes when a hand tangles in his greasy hair. 

"Why do you do this, Gavin?" asks Nines. His voice is so soft Gavin isn't sure he's expected to understand, let alone answer. He chooses to hide his face in the stupid black turtleneck instead, and breathes in the smell of it when Nines only continues, "why do you hurt yourself?"

Because maybe, if he's truly hurt, he can have this, answers a small voice in the back of his head. The balm to his loneliness he craves more than anything else, but can't get any other way.

"Stay," he rasps while he's feeling self indulgent with both truth and comfort. "Please stay with me."

The other hand joins the one in his hair, and Nines presses Gavin's head lightly into himself. "I will," he promises. "Get into bed, okay?"

He obliges, if only because bed sounds really fucking good right now. A familiar sense of detachment hits him after he's wiggled out of his jeans and hoodie, some flavor of disgust with not having showered before bed. It morphs quickly into the same thing as always—

"Can I sit next to you?"

Gavin blinks awake and turns around to see Nines standing by the bed. There should be words for the way he looks, poised and haloed in the pink warmth of dawn as he searches Gavin's expression with his big eyes soft as snowfall, but in this moment Gavin doesn't know any words beyond _yes_ and _please_ and _here,_ so those are the ones he says.

"Can you do that with your hands again?" he mumbles after they've settled, Nines more lying down than sitting, Gavin's ear against his shoulder.

"This?" Nines asks, and there is a hand on Gavin's head again, so he hums and lets himself sag against the android a little more. 

He falls asleep with his head blissfully empty, thoughts eased into complacency with murmured promises that he's not alone, that he deserves the rest, and that when he wakes, he and Nines will be alright.

**Author's Note:**

> Do they talk about it when reed is cognizant? They sure try but that's between me and the slow-burn I'll never write 
> 
> shoutout to lorde's liability for also playing in my head at one point of writing this, if you know then you know 
> 
> Anyway the sun is up and I have soothed myself to sleep at last. Sweet dreams kids don't let the brain bugs bite
> 
> Also! Quick round of love: the idea of blind/deaf nines is 100% organically shoplifted from my favorite stupiddragon's [Be My Eyes and Ears](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17378069) go love it!
> 
> [one last plug: looking for a discord server where people still yell about dbh? [New ERA has gotchu boo](https://discord.gg/eYJ2f8s)]


End file.
